On February 15, Stanislav Il'yasov, prime minister of the pro-Moscow Chechen government, told Interfax that elections in Chechnya cannot realistically be held for at least eighteen months. "One year," he stipulated, "is needed to adopt and introduce a new republican constitution, and at least six... MORE

At a session of the pro-Moscow Chechen government held on February 13, Bislan Gantamirov, a former mayor of Djohar (Grozny) and, until recently, a federal inspector in the Southern Federal District, was presented as a new deputy premier of Chechnya and also as the new... MORE

Writing in the No. 11 (February 14) issue of Novaya Gazeta, the award-winning Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya presented her version of what happened to and around her on February 8-9 in Shatoi District, located in the Chechen highlands. She began by noting that Interfax... MORE

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported on February 11 that, on the previous day, its award-winning war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya had been taken into custody while she was covering a mopping up operation being conducted in Shatoi District. According to one account, she was taken to... MORE

On February 8, the Russian presidential spokesman for issues relating to Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, observed during a Moscow press conference that the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya would have been completed a long time ago had not a part of the Chechen populace been aiding the... MORE

On February 7, the Russian website SMI.ru published a lengthy summary of the recent testimony of CIA director George Tenet before the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee. Tenet's words concerning the conflict in Chechnya were cited, strangely, in the original English: "Putin," Tenet reported to... MORE

Writing in the pro-Putin website Strana.ru on February 8, journalist Viktor Cherepakhin assailed the warm reception recently accorded in Germany to Said Abumuslimov, "one more 'right hand' of Aslan Maskhadov." The German organization, Society for Foreign Policy, Cherepakhin noted, which has close ties to the... MORE

In a letter published in the February 5 issue of the New York Times, Chechen separatist foreign minister Ilyas Akhmadov advocated that an "international investigation of the Moscow blasts [of September 1999] would be a good start in correcting an unintended side effect of the... MORE

Obshchestvennoe Mnenie recently conducted a Russia-wide poll on the 1999 bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk. Forty-three percent of respondents reportedly believe that "no one is seeking" those responsible. "They suppose that in the top echelons of power there are people interested in having these crimes... MORE